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This book "fills the unquestionable need for a comprehensive and up-to-date handbook on the fast-developing field of pragmatics" and "includes contributions from many of the principal figures in a wide variety of fields of pragmatic research as well as some up-and-coming pragmatists."

POSSESSIVES IN ENGLISH: AN EXPLORATION INCOGNITIVE GRAMMAR serves as a no-small contribution tothe study of the English possessive and it is, I believe, destined tobecome one of the keystone texts of this specific school oftheorization and research. As clearly stated at the very beginningof this volume, this book is about "a single morpheme in Englishand the constitutions in which it occurs" (p. 1) embedded in thetheory of Cognitive Grammar developed by Ronald Langackerand others. This book has two themes. One is to argue that thecognitive approach to the English possessive "is able to offer amore comprehensive and more insightful account of the data thansome other theories, especially those associated with Chomskyangenerative grammar" (p. 3). The second one is to provide "acritical examination of the theoretical bases of these approaches,and their evaluation especially in the light of their treatment ofpossessives" (p. 3). This remarkable monograph would be ofgreat value to anyone interested in cognitive linguistics, andcognitive grammar in particular. The book consists of thirteenchapters, the last of which is followed by an extensive list ofreferences and an index of names and a subject index. In whatfollows I provide a brief summary of each of the chapters.

Chapter 1, "Preliminaries" (pp. 1-20), provides an answer to thisquestion: why devote a whole book to the English possessivemorpheme, the one that attaches to the ends of noun phrases togive the forms John's the city's, the children's and the like? Theauthor's answer is that in spite of their seemingly transparentnature, possessives do present a number of rather specialchallenges, and raise a number of intriguing problems touching onthe very basis of linguistic theory. Much ink in this chapter isdevoted to preliminary discussions of possessive nominalizations,semantic issues and the language specificity and the meaning ofthe English prenominal possessive. The author concludes that thedistinctive character of the English prenominal possessive lies inthe fact that it has grammaticalized this component of a relationof paradigmatic possessives (p. 19).

Chapter 3, "Some Basic Notions of Cognitive Grammar" (pp. 58-80), introduces some basic concepts of cognitivegrammar. "Symbolic unit" is a central one. According toLangacker (1987), the symbolic unit of cognitive grammar isnothing other than the familiar 'linguistic sign', and he extendsthe notion of linguistic sign both horizontally and vertically. Thus,not only are the words and morphemes of a language regarded assymbolic units, fixed idiomatic expressions also have symbolicunit status, which comprises what Langacker calls "constructionschemas". For the symbolic thesis of language advocated bySaussure, the author compares the views of generative andcognitive linguists and concludes that "a person's knowledge of alanguage contains a good deal of redundancy, with highlyschematic knowledge coexisting with a good deal of ratherspecific knowledge of how the general schemas may beinstantiated." (p. 73; cf. Taylor 1995) In Section 3.4 (pp.73-80),the question of the content of the semantic representations isaddressed.

Chapter 4, "Syntax in Cognitive Grammar" (pp. 81-108), dealswith some aspects of the treatment of syntax and syntacticcategories in cognitive grammar bearing on the possessiveconstruction. The first few pages dwells on a distinction,fundamental to cognitive grammar, between two kinds oflinguistic unit: those that designate things, and those thatdesignate relations. All linguistic units belong to one of these twocategories. Nouns and nominal expressions designate things,whilst expressions of other syntactic categories (clausal,prepostitional, adjectival, adverbial, etc.) designate relations. Theauthor entertains that the distinction is fundamental, not only to acharacterization of syntactic categories, but also to the mechanismby which symbolic units combine to form units of increasinginternal complexity. For the kinds of relations, the following threedistinctions are presented. A first distinction amongst relationalpredicates is between those that designate an atemporal relationand those that designate a temporal relation, or process. A seconddistinction has to do with whether the trajector and/or landmark ofa relation are things or are themselves relations. A thirddistinction concerns the possibility that the landmark may be 'incorporated' into the relational predicate. The author then turnsto an issue central to any theory of syntax, that is, the combinationof linguistic units to form increasingly complex structures, inwhich the relations of modification and complementation areillustrated. As for the role of determiners, the author questions thetraditional account, in which a noun phrase is indeed headed bythe noun, and articles are assimilated to the more general categoryof adjectival modifiers. He argues that the relational character ofgrounding would be captured by means of an unprofiled relationin the semantic structure of the determiner. The semantic structureof a determiner would be analogous to the semantic structure ofan inherently relational noun like 'uncle' (p. 98). The author goeson to diagram the semantic structure of a grounded nominal. Thischapter concludes with some remarks on the status and propercharacterization of case morphemes.

Chapter 5, "The Constituent Structure of Prenominal Possessives"(pp. 109-145), discusses the constituent structure of prenominalpossessives, focusing on some of the more controversial issuesthat arise within mainstream phrase structure and GB theories,and concluding with a cognitive grammar of its constituency. Inthis chapter, the author proposes a schematic structure forprenominal possessives, arguing that the import of the possessornominal is to facilitate identification of the possessee, by mentionof a reference point entity that is cognitively accessible, and fromwhose perspective the referent of the possessee nominal may beidentified. It is from this chapter that the discussion of possessivesreally gets started.

Chapter 6, "Prenominal Possessives: Some GenerativeApproaches" (pp. 146-183), as the title suggests, focuses ongenerative approaches towards prenominal possessives. Theprenominal possessive constructions in English has a number ofdistinctive properties, concerning both its internal structure and itsusage range, which set it apart form possessive constructions inmany other languages. In spite of its parochial character, theconstruction has figured quite prominently in thetransformational-generative literature of the past two and a halfdecades or so. This chapter undertakes a critical review of someof these analyses, such as Chomsky's "Remarks on nominalization"(1970), constraints on possessive nominalizations,theta-theory for prenominal possessives, Safir's distinction ofprenominal possessives (1987), Giorgi and Longobardi's account,semantic-based account of possessive nominalizations. And allthese considerations serves as an important ingredient of thecognitive grammar account of possessive nominalizations that theauthor develops in Chapter 9.

Chapter 7, "Specificity and Definiteness of PrenominalPossessives" (pp. 184-204), addresses one important aspect of thesemantics of prenominal possessives, namely, their referentialproperties. Three kinds of reference are first distinguished:definite-specific, indefinite-specific, and non-specific. And theauthor argues that prenominal possessives generally have specificreference, and are nearly always compatible with definitereference; nevertheless, there are no grounds for excluding inprinciple the possibility that prenominal possessives may haveindefinite, non-specific reference. Definiteness and specificitycannot therefore be regarded as inherent properties of theconstruction. In the two sections that follows, the author examinesattempts of Woisetschlaeger and Lyons to derive the referentialproperties of possessives from general syntactic principles,pointing out that both accounts presuppose a conservative versionof X-bar syntax, and both proceed on the factually inaccurate andproblematic assumption that possessives invariably have definitereference. The author argues that the failure of configurationalaccounts points to the need for an alternative approach, motivatedby semantic and pragmatic considerations and that the referentialproperties of possessives fall out rather naturally from thereference account of the construction.

Chapter 8,: "Possessors as Topics" (pp. 205-235) and Chapter 9,"The Cue Validity of the Possessor" (pp. 236-264) are devotedto some aspects of the reference point analysis of thepossessive construction outlined in Chapter 1. Chapter 8focuses on properties of the possessor, or reference pointnominal. On the reference point analysis, the possessor nominalnames a reference point entity, which the speaker introducesas an aid for the subsequent identification of the target entity,denoted by the possessee. By considering the expectedproperties of reference point and target, the author tries toformulate a number of predictions concerning the possessorand the possessee. And confirmation of the predictions willtend to confirm the correctness of the reference point analysisThe author concludes in Chapter 8 that topicality offers itselfas one factor behind the general impossibilitiy of reversing thenominals in a possessive relation (235). And this property isfully consistent with the asymmetry between the topicalpossessor and the non-topical possessee. Chapter 9 concernsthe semantic relation between possessor and possessee. Giventhe speaker's desire to uniquely identify the target, whatdetermines the choice of reference point? In addressing thequestion, the author pays attention to the restrictions onpossessor nominals that were reviewed in Chapter 6, and thatare encapsulated in the Experience and Affectedness Constraints.Actually, what the author strives to pursue is that, in addition tothe requirement that it be topical, the possessor nominal needs tobe such that it can provide reliable cues fro the identification ofthe target.

Chapter 10, "Ing-nominalizations" (pp. 265-286), addresses theuse of the possessive morpheme in association with derverbal V-ing forms, as exemplified in the following three types ofconstructions:Type A: the enemy's destroying of the city.Type B: the enemy's destroying the city.Type C: the enemy destroying the city.In terms of its internal syntax, Type A is the most nominal of theing-constructions. And the author holds that Type B and Cpreserve, in their internal make-up, a number of characteristics ofthe verbal expressions from which they derive.

Chapter 11, "Possessive Compounds" (pp. 287-314), begins witha concern of characterizing possessive compounds, incontradiction to prenominal possessives, with a view todemonstrating that the distinctiveness of possessive compoundsvis-a-vis non-possessive compounds turn out, in many cases, to besomewhat blurred and that the possessive morpheme incompounds has to be a completely different kind of entity fromthe possessive morpheme in prenominal possessives (cf. Croft1990). As regards what motivates the presence of the possessivemorpheme in just some noun-noun compounds, but not in others,the author suggests that a possessive construal is favored just incase the compound exhibits features which are characteristic ofprenomina possessives (p. 308). The last section investigatessyntactic construction as prototype categories.

Chapter 12, "Other Possessive Constructions" (pp. 315-338),deals with three further possessive constraints, each involving theuse of a possessor phrase, namely, the pronominal possessive, thepredicative possessive, and the postnominal possessive. In eachcase, the possessor phrase is used independently of a postposedpossessee noun.

Chapter 13, "Possession" (pp. 339-351), addresses the topic ofpossession. After clarifying the notion of possession, the authorpresents several prototype accounts of possessive relations,concluding that these accounts share with taxonomic accounts afocus on the semantic relations between possessor and possessee,to the neglect of the construction's discourse function. In the finalsection, the author proposes that the reference point functioninvolves a subjectification of some aspects of paradigmaticpossession.

Besides presenting a cognitive grammar analysis of thepossessive, this book also undertakes a confrontation of thecognitive grammar approach with some alternatives, in particular,those that have been pursued within the generative, and morerecently, the government and binding paradigm, and its newestprogeny, principles and parameters. This highly-academicmonograph under review would contribute to the development ofthe growing discipline of cognitive grammar. The book ismeticulously written, cogent and profound, with very few typos.The only disappointment, as I see it, would be that the discussionof the topic of possession in the last chapter appears a bit short.Anyway, this book must be credited with overall success becauseof exhaustive material, the richness of the analysis and the way itpresents its ideas.

About the reviewer:Chaoqun Xie is a lecturer and PhD candidate at the ForeignLanguages Institute, Fujian Teachers University in Fuzhou, FujianProvince, China. His main areas of research interests includecognitive linguistics, pragmatics, and communication.